Infants and other incontinent individuals wear absorbent articles such as diapers and incontinent briefs to receive and contain discharged urine and other body exudates. Such absorbent articles function both to contain the discharged materials and to isolate those materials from the body of the wearer and from the wearer's garments and bed clothing. Disposable absorbent articles having many different basic designs are known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. Re. 26,152, entitled "Disposable Diaper," which issued on Jan. 31, 1967, to Duncan et al., describes a basic disposable diaper structure that has achieved wide acceptance and considerable commercial success.
Disposable absorbent articles that include a topsheet having a single, relatively large area aperture to permit fecal material to pass therethrough are known. Such structures are directed to isolating the fecal material from the body of the wearer. Examples of such known structures are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,037,416, entitled "Disposable Absorbent Article Having Elastically Extensible Topsheet," which issued on Aug. 6, 1991, to Allen et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,775, entitled "Trisection Topsheets for Disposable Absorbent Articles and Disposable Absorbent Articles Having Such Trisection Topsheets," which issued on Dec. 14, 1993, to Freeland et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,624,422, entitled "Absorbent Article Having an Extendible Split Core," which issued on Apr. 29, 1997, to Allen.
In addition to isolating fecal material from the body of the wearer, it is also highly desirable that fecal material be concealed from view upon removal of the absorbent article from the body of the wearer. Such concealment is especially desirable when the fecal material is in semi-solid or fluid form, which is typical of bowel movements of newborn and very young infants, and of others suffering from diarrhea. Accordingly, it is an aspect of the present invention to provide a disposable absorbent article that is so configured as to block from view as much as possible of semi-solid and fluid fecal material that is received in article during use.